Twirl came to us on the 20th of October 2008. He was dropped off, after he walked up to a man as he was walking his dogs. Luckily the guy got to him before the dogs, and brought him to us.
When he arrived, his face was covered in tar, and I had no idea how to safely remove tar from a ferret face, but I did know a person who would know, My Mum, as she regularly rescues oiled and tarred up birds, and sorts them out. Only problem was, she was on holiday for 2 more days, so I decided to wait until she came home, to do the job properly. What I did not realise at that time, was tar is actually corrosive, and by the time we had removed it from him, he had a some pretty sever chemical burns all around his face. We felt really bad, but as was the rule for all of Twirls life, he never held it against us, and was amazing, as he let us rub the butter into to his face to dissolve the tar, happily licking any that ran into my palm, never once trying to bite, in fact in his entire life, he never once bit anyone.
Twirl was a great ferret, not only did he never bite anyone, but he was always happy to give a kiss, and with his small size, longer top jaw, and very long tail, he had a mousy, pretty look as well.
My fondest memory, was just after he arrived, we discovered we had a mouse living in the front room. It was like a scene from Tom and Jerry, watching him trying to get grip on a laminated floor, while the mouse would taunt him staying just out of reach, at one point it was sitting on top of a mains plug in the socket on the wall, and Twirl was jumping up and down to try and get it, never did catch it though.
The other fantastic memory, is his tongue was always sticking out... he was so sweet.
A few weeks back, he suddenly swelled up all around his tummy and back end, so he was taken to the vets, where he seemed to have a very low blood glucose level, and a couple of other things, so he was put on Steroids, and love. Within a week, we saw a good improvement, and after a few more days, is dosage was dropped from 2 tablets to 1.5 a day, but he did seem to be a bit strange with the way he was holding his head as the week progressed... we decided he would be going back to the vets this week.
We went away this weekend, and as usual took all the ferrets with us, but on the Saturday morning, we noticed Twirl was having what appeared to be a fit in the cage, we grabbed him out, and got a tablet into him, plus some convalescent powder, and he seemed to pick up. Once we were happy he seemed to be OK, we went out, and came back mid afternoon, but he was fitting again. We tried and tried, but could not get him to come round enough to get anything into him. He just wanted to cuddle into me, so I held him for about half an hour, trying to get him to wake up enough to eat, but he just wanted to sleep. In the end, we decided to just cuddle him, and make him comfortable, rather than pulling him round continually, and after a few minuets, he gave a final sigh, and went to sleep for the last time.
As you can imagine, we are gutted, we did think we were making progress with his medication, and were not expecting to lose him so soon. He was the greatest ferret we could ask for from day one, and everyone who ever met him, loved him.
Sweet Dreams Twirl, we love you so much...
